Jenny Oliver - The House We Called Home - The magical, laugh out loud summer holiday read from the bestselling Jenny Oliver

‘I’ll have no hair.’

‘I’ll be all wrinkly,’ she said, lifting her eyelid up with one finger then letting it drop again. ‘That’s the problem with parenthood. Half of it is spent waiting it out till it’s done and you can go back to the people you were before, but you don’t realise that the older your kids get the older you’re getting. Those before people have gone.’

Jack glanced at her in the mirror. ‘That sounds very much like the start of a column.’

Stella thwacked him on the leg. ‘I’m serious.’

They were conversing via the mirror still.

‘As am I, that’s the kind of thing you write about, isn’t it? When you’re not bashing Sonny.’

‘Thanks for that, Jack.’

He laughed. ‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But you need to talk to him. The longer you leave it the harder it will be.’

Stella nodded.

They stared for a moment, side by side in the reflection. The heat of the room making their skin glisten.

Jack was the first to look away. ‘You look as young and vital as the day I met you.’

She sighed a laugh. ‘That’s just a blatant lie.’

Jack went back to sitting up against the headboard scrolling through his phone.

Stella stared at herself a moment longer. Seeing in her face the features of her mother. Swallowing when she thought of the simmering animosity her mum was currently showing towards her father. It made her pluck up the courage to turn to Jack and ask, ‘Is everything all right between us?’

‘Fine,’ he said, looking up with a frown, bemused as to why she was asking the question.

Stella nodded.

Jack put the phone down. ‘Stel, we’re fine. Just a bit tired, probably.’ He scooched over the bed and gave her a kiss on the cheek, ruffling her hair a bit. She swatted his hand away with a half-smile.

‘All right?’ he checked.

‘Yes.’

That was the reassuring thing about Jack. Whatever happened he’d soldier on through, pick you and everyone else up who might be floundering without a moment’s pause to question.

But as she watched him go back to his phone, she knew it wasn’t fine. The car journey had proved as such – like a condensed version of their current relationship, normal one minute and bickering the next. Both of them too quick to react, like they knew each other so well there was no point plodding through the benefit of the doubt.

A couple of weeks ago, her editor had asked her if she’d wanted to write a piece called MOT Marriage for an upcoming edition of the magazine. They wanted it written as Potty-Mouth, picking up on the current trend for critiquing the minutia of stuck-in-a-rut long-term relationships with a list of tasks and questions for the married couple to complete. Stella agreed, and while she knew she and Jack had precisely the kind of long-term relationship that most of her readers had – a bit stuck in a rut but getting through the day-to-day via Netflix and the anticipation of mini-breaks – she had fully intended to make up the content. Nowadays, fierce competition in the Slummy Mummy marketplace had pushed the Potty-Mouth brand to be much cooler and far more exciting than Stella, like an older sister she was constantly trying to impress. Stella already had it plotted out: Potty-Mouth and her fictional husband were going to throw the questions out of the window and do it their way – going to a host of exciting erotic workshops, flamenco dance classes, and a bit of swinging with another set of parents at the fictional school gate. She’d researched it all, the article was practically written and in the bag.

Now, however, she stared at the face in the mirror, as she thought of the clear disintegration of her parents’ marriage and the strain on her own relationship since the Sonny incident, she wondered if maybe she should do it, for real.

She swivelled round on the bed to face Jack, feeling a nervous warmth creep up her neck.

Outside the sound of the waves rolled gently in the darkness.

Jack looked up. ‘What?’

‘Do you want to help me with an article I’m doing?’

He narrowed his eyes, uncertain. Stella never asked for any involvement in what she was writing. He usually just read about their souped-up life over his Shredded Wheat. ‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s called Marriage MOT,’ she said.

‘Oh Jesus, Stella. We just said everything was fine.’

‘Well, then it should be easy.’

Jack tipped his head back against the wall. ‘What do we have to do?’

‘You know the type of thing: are you having enough sex? Are you listening enough to each other? Harbouring any grievances … blah blah blah.’ She tried to spin it all casual.

Jack sighed. ‘I’m not harbouring any grievances.’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘We’ll tick that off the list.’

Jack thought about it and frowned. ‘We have enough sex, don’t we?’

‘Well that’s what we test. You think you’re fine but you can never be completely sure until you check. Like when we had the car done and he said the brake pads were worn out.’

‘Would the sex be the brake pads?’

‘Maybe?’ Stella smiled.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my brake pads,’ said Jack, puffing his chest out.

‘I’m not sure that analogy makes sense.’ Stella shook her head.

There was a pause. Jack bit down on his lip. ‘I don’t know, Stel. Seems all a bit forced.’

‘Yeah but maybe it’ll be fun. At the very least it might stop us from becoming like them,’ she said, angling her head towards her parents’ bedroom. ‘I don’t want you to go missing.’

Jack looked at her, his eyes softening. ‘I don’t want you to go missing either.’ Then he shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. ‘All right, fine.’ He slid his phone onto the bedside table. Stella did a little cheer and came round the bed to get in next to him, the beautifully ironed sheet crisp and momentarily cool. ‘So, what’s the first step of this MOT?’ he asked.

‘We have to start having loads of sex,’ she said.

‘Really?’ Jack looked sort of intrigued.

Stella nodded, the pillow soft beneath her head.

Jack nodded.

There was a pause as they lay in the sticky humid heat.

‘But I’m really tired,’ Stella said.

‘Thank God for that.’ Jack exhaled with relief. ‘Me too.’

CHAPTER 8

Moira caused quite a stir in the morning – while everyone else was either clearing up the breakfast things or, in the case of Sonny and Gus, playing on their phones while Rosie was watching TV – by hoiking her bag onto her shoulder and saying as boldly as she could, ‘Righto, I’m off to my book club.’

Glances had been exchanged.

‘What about Dad?’

‘There’s enough of you to cover all the bases,’ Moira said quickly before adding, ‘Sonny, can you look after the dog?’ and leaving the house without really waiting for an answer.

She didn’t know the protocol of going to one’s book club while one’s husband was missing but if she was quite honest, Moira just had to get away. She loved her children but when they were all in the house together sometimes it just got too overwhelming. She felt herself retreat like a snail; every comment about her clothes, her hair colour, her plans of action, her dog’s stupid name – every one left her edging away, till she hurried out to book club without even thinking about the propriety of it.

It was another bright, hazy day. She wove her way through the back lanes to the village, the sun piercing through the overhanging canopy of leaves to banks of lush ferns, the car clipping the odd wayward frond in her haste. In the past Moira would never have dreamed of joining anything like a book club. There was a twinge of shame now when she thought back. She’d always seen herself as rather above it all. She’d happily indulge in a bit of village gossip but always with the aloof air that she was humouring them all, donating a little of her very precious time. Her husband was an Olympic hero.